Hellmode - The Inconsequential Game Over- Dying for a Change. Thanks Digg.When I had to restart after being so close to the end of Super Mario Bros., it killed the game for me. Today, realizing I never beat the game, I wonder why it bothered me so much. For some reason, I felt entitled to a save feature and a restart, but it makes me wonder why restarts even exist in video games in the first place. After all, there are rarely second chances in any other forms of entertainment–nor are there any in real life. Yet in video games, it seems, we take them for granted and get disgruntled when they aren’t there.

ExtremeTech - The State of Windows 7 Gaming. Thanks Digg.On the software side, Windows 7 has smoothed over a lot of rough edges. In addition, Microsoft's DirectX 11 has brought some interesting effects to the table. The biggest improvement is probably tessellation, which produces smoother curved surfaces by deploying increasing numbers of polygons. It can make floors and walls look truly three-dimensional, even when close-up. Other DirectX 11 features include multithreading, which increases frame rates on multicore GPU-equipped cards; transparency anti-aliasing for smoother, layered surfaces; and improved post-processing, for effects like heat distortion and depth-of-field focusing that are applied after an image is rendered.

The Vista hatred came from all the people that were too stupid to figure out how to configure the UAC. As soon as I installed Vista, I went to the control panel and ticked one checkbox, ONE CHECKBOX! Then all the problems people were complaining about went away.

Ruffiana wrote on Jul 18, 2010, 13:49:We're working on a DX11 engine right now, so I've seen some of this tech in action and it's pretty impressive. Unlike Messiah's sub-division surfaces, DX11's tesselation is seamless. The "Stone Giant" demo is a good example of this in action, it's only when you turn on the wireframe and see the tesslation happening that you can notice it.

2. Can you provide me with the system specs that was used for that demo? I'm saving up for a system upgrade. I really want my next system to be truly nextgen with DX11 and a video card that supports it, ram, cpu, the works.

"It is possible to synthesize excited bromide in an argon matrix. It’s an excimer frozen in its excited state."

Ruffiana wrote on Jul 18, 2010, 13:49:We're working on a DX11 engine right now, so I've seen some of this tech in action and it's pretty impressive. Unlike Messiah's sub-division surfaces, DX11's tesselation is seamless. The "Stone Giant" demo is a good example of this in action, it's only when you turn on the wireframe and see the tesslation happening that you can notice it.

Small point of correction though, it doesn't make "make floors and walls look truly three-dimensional, even when close-up", it is actually creating and displacing geometry...unlike some of the current gen tricks that give the appearance of three dimensional surfaces. It's a small, but crucial step forward in real-time rendering tech.

The programmers are raving about 'geometry shaders', but that's above my pay grade to understand.

We're working on a DX11 engine right now, so I've seen some of this tech in action and it's pretty impressive. Unlike Messiah's sub-division surfaces, DX11's tesselation is seamless. The "Stone Giant" demo is a good example of this in action, it's only when you turn on the wireframe and see the tesslation happening that you can notice it.

Small point of correction though, it doesn't make "make floors and walls look truly three-dimensional, even when close-up", it is actually creating and displacing geometry...unlike some of the current gen tricks that give the appearance of three dimensional surfaces.

The Vista hatred came from all the people that were too stupid to figure out how to configure the UAC. As soon as I installed Vista, I went to the control panel and ticked one checkbox, ONE CHECKBOX! Then all the problems people were complaining about went away. Sometimes great marketing can't even win over mass stupidity.

I like and use W7 at work, but I am not ready to jump to it at home though. I still have lots of old softwares and hardwares for it. I will do a clean install of W7 later on when softwares support is not there in XP. XP Pro. SP3 does fine for me for now.

I jumped a short time ago from XP to W7, never tried Vista so I can't comment on why it was hated. All I know is that W7 sure is a whole lot better than XP. Never understood the Vista hatred either but since I didn't try it I can't say if it was something based on facts or based on NERDRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGE.

I got W7 on the pre-order discount thing but haven't bothered to install it since Vista 64 still working great for me. I did run the W7 beta on the house machine and it seemed fine and everything, though that's now running Ubuntu, which I'd stick on my main machine if it wasn't for gaming.

TBF I picked up Vista after SP1 so I guess I skipped the initial period where hardware support was sketchy.

Well one of the main reasons I loved Vista was stability, no more crashes or anything. I haven't seen a blue screen since XP and I switched to Vista pretty much on day one, so that's quite a number of years.

I was anti-vista because I had an evga nvidia card that would flake and crash every 3-4 hours or whenever the screensaver would enter sleep mode.

Turned out it was a hardware problem and not Vista. I however vowed to not use it after switching back to xp relieved me of the problems.

Vista was supposed to further isolate video card crashes and problems. It was one of the touted features of the core changes. I was not impressed.

Today I run 7. I have since 7Beta worked on my machine without horrendous video problems. I still refuse to use Vista, but we use 7 at work now. so I'm beyond Vista. There is no real reason other than the experience left me with a terrible taste in my mouth.

(Note: I switched shortly after that experience to ATi. I switch roughly 2-3 gens anyways)

Hoop wrote on Jul 17, 2010, 17:33:Gad, I purchased Vista 64 bit the first day it arrived, was ready for driver hell but within 2 weeks smooth & sorted.Never had a problem with it since.Love it.The most stable platform I have ever had.Have no reason to go to Win7.

Games run great.As fast as Win7.

The anti-Vista crusade always baffled me... a month or so after release, with UAC turned off, and it was pretty much the perfect OS for me.

We desperately need an easy way for non-technical people to check if a game's gonna run on their PC. The Windows Experience Index was a good idea but Microsoft caved to Intel and the whole thing's useless.

Not only would it, let's call it the SteamScore, help PC gaming directly (because your mom can see that Crysis might not run on her rig but Sims 3 will) but also indirectly because retailers would have an easier time to justify an additional 50-100 bucks to the customer (look, it costs 400 instead of 350 but your SteamScore goes from an Intel craptastic 45 to 230). And it would help with Nvidia's and ATI's idiotic rebranding exercises, although they'd just switch over to gaming the new system.

Gad, I purchased Vista 64 bit the first day it arrived, was ready for driver hell but within 2 weeks smooth & sorted.Never had a problem with it since.Love it.The most stable platform I have ever had.Have no reason to go to Win7.